Does European economic integration create more inequality between domestic regions, or is the opposite true? We show that a general answer to this question does not exist, and that the outcome depends on the liberalization scenario. In order to examine the impact of European and international...

Implementation of the European internal market and East-West integration has been accompanied by a dramatic change in the spatial distribution of economic activity, with higher growth west and east of a longitude degree through Germany and Italy. In the east, income growth has been accompanied...

The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

Im Zuge der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union eröffnen sich für die Beitrittskandidatenländer gute Möglichkeiten, wirtschaftliche Aktivitäten aus Westeuropa und anderswo zu attrahieren und im Pro-Kopf-Einkommen aufzuholen. Der Aufholprozess der Beitrittsländer wird jedoch von...

This volume was prepared by Thomas Steinwachs while he was working at the ifo Center for International Economics. It was completed in September 2018 and accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU). It is a collection of four self-contained...

This paper analyses the effect of international borders and of trade agreements at international borders on subnational (i.e. regional) growth. We construct an extensive panel dataset covering 1,350 regions in 86 countries worldwide between 1950 and 2017. Our results show that international...

In the course of integrating Eastern Europe into the EU the accession countries will have a good opportunity to attract industries from Western Europe and elsewhere and to catch up in per capita income. However, the catching up of the accession countries will be accompanied by an increase in...

We study the impact of changing relative market access in an enlarged EU on the economies of incumbent Objective 1 regions. First, we track the impact of external opening on internal spatial configurations in a three-region economic geography model. External opening gives rise to potentially...

Globalization and European integration are substantially changing the interregional division of labor in Europe and the industrial specialization of European regions, thereby potentially affecting the extent of disparities between countries and regions. This paper reviews several theoretical...

The ongoing process of European integration is likely to increase trade and factor mobility thereby increasing interregional competition and affecting the interregional division of labor. From a theoretical standpoint, rising specialization and polarization of European regions may result from...